


you didn't get to heaven, but you made it close

by sirnando



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 00:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15085169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirnando/pseuds/sirnando
Summary: They lay in Fernando’s car in a vacant parking lot, seats pushed all the way back and the sunroof pulled open. The stars twinkled down at them, Sergio convinced they were Morse code messages from whoever was up there watching.





	you didn't get to heaven, but you made it close

**Author's Note:**

> this is so short, but it was supposed to be for the last day aka world cup day. title is a coldplay lyric

They lay in Fernando’s car in a vacant parking lot, seats pushed all the way back and the sunroof pulled open. The stars twinkled down at them, Sergio convinced they were Morse code messages from whoever was up there watching. 

Their breaths mixed with the hum of crickets outside and the music from the sound system. It was a disk of songs Sergio had made for Fernando a while ago, titled “musical stimulation”. Fernando scribbled a ‘de’ in front of the stimulation on the CD with sharpie marker, because he and Sergio differed the most in musical taste. He appreciated it nonetheless. 

It was a week before Sergio left for Russia. A week before Fernando fulfilled his promise of watching from the stands, swallowed by the crowd and holding his fingers crossed. He had lost his privilege of traveling with the team a while back, but Sergio had begged him to come along and Fernando couldn’t imagine not going. The perfect way to end things: exactly where they’d started. 

Sergio had never cared for nostalgia, Fernando thrived in it. He was overly fond of labeled pictures, yellowing in the corners. Of empty bottles of blonde hair dye, lonely hair bands that Sergio no longer had any use for. He would read and reread the journals he used to keep, every moment of their World Cup victory recorded. Lips kissing gold, kissing fabric, kissing other lips. It’d been a frenzy of _happy_. A bubble of good feelings that they were trapped in, too naive to think it would ever burst. It was the one time Sergio had seen happy tears well up in Fernando’s eyes: that night when they’d been scrolling through the day’s photos.  

The one memory Sergio liked to dwell on was Fernando back then. Skin flaking on the bridge of his nose, freckles clustered together in an attempt to hide his blushes—how Sergio always had to brush aside Fernando’s bangs before they kissed and Fernando’s one crooked front tooth. 

During the nights that Sergio couldn’t fall asleep, lying alone in bed, he relived the first time Fernando had said  _ I love you _ . Hands trembling, barely a whisper so Sergio had asked him to repeat, eyes dancing. And because they’d been sitting on a bench in the middle of nowhere, Scotch still coating their tongues, Fernando yelled  _ I love Sergio Ramos _ to the trees around them.

That was the nostalgia Sergio thrived in. When they were younger, prettier. When they still had blind faith in perfect lives and a list of dreams they believed would all come true. Before Fernando was trapped in an endless cycle of back and forth, back and forth—never able to find a permanent home.

And now they lay here in the empty parking lot, on the downhill of their career and too many years gone too quickly between them. Fernando had teared up that morning when he’d found his first grey hair. It was hereditary; he remembered his father gray-haired for as far as his memory reached. 

Another addition to things Fernando disliked about himself, things he wished he could change. Sergio remembered the countless nights they stayed up on the phone, Sergio convincing Fernando that he was good enough, he was good enough, he was  _ good _ enough. And yet Fernando was never properly convinced. 

_ I want to come home _ ,  _ Sese,  _ quiet pleads on the other end that Sergio wished he could kiss away, but it was a third of the way into the season and impossible for them to meet. Weathered hearts always trying to keep pace with one another, but always a few beats off.

But recently the roles had swapped. Sergio had become a bundle of nerves and addicted to nostalgia because this was the first World Cup without Fernando nearby. It would be too unnatural, too hard. Yet Fernando kept reminding him that Sergio had stopped relying on him a long time ago, had never really in the first place.

Time had eaten its way to this moment: reminiscing to a chorus of crickets, eyes brimming with memories. They would undoubtedly always want to turn it back, to change their decisions, to be together for longer, but as long as their hands remained intertwined; as long as their hearts kept  _ trying _ —South Africa sang on forever.


End file.
